


Selenate

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Friendzone, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 15:42:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12938445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Selenate

The auditorium was peaceful until the two came in. I spared a final mournful thought for the silence before they swaggered in, laughing in their shameless banter. The waves of joy and positivity the couple radiated stung. Unconsciously, I elicited a groan, but in their chatter the two did not hear.

“Have you heard about the most recent episode on _Attack of the Titans_?” Selene asked, not me, of course. She would be bouncing on her feet if not for the black heels. Her hair, swung over her shoulder in a way only she could have pulled off. It was Alvin’s favorite hairstyle, as it was also mine. From the moment she greeted me with a chuckle and a small wave, I knew I would never find another girl that would hook my soul into her obsidian-black eyes like she had so carelessly. Cliché, it’s painful, but it is the truth, and if it sounds suspiciously like Romeo and Juliet where a man falls in love “at first sight” twice in a row, then I will shrug because it is none of your business to meddle in our affairs. 

I read Romeo and Juliet a few years ago, not because I have been a starry-eyed lover since I was a child, but because it was required reading. Laughing at the absurdity of the lovers’ dilemma because we were young then and love was this irrational, amorphous cloud of intangibility, distant from the grip of our understanding. Man laughs at what he cannot control, and lusts for what he cannot have. In the final essay of that semester, I argued against the statement, citing my dislike for cats does not mean I cannot have cats as pets, though it would cause severe emotional trauma if I did. In that case, I dislike cats because I cannot control the behavior of cats, and thus, would take any opportunity to make abysmally horrendous cat jokes. Slitted green eyes that watch you and glow, two ghostly lamps in the night. I’ve heard tales of cats leaping for their owner’s throats when they sleep. Nothing more than urban legends, but if the day comes that I find a cat’s claws deep in my throat as I wake, I will not be surprised.

Men are hypocrites because they do not admit their mistakes, however blatant they may be. 

Upon hearing this, the old cat would roll in his grave. Not a large grave; after all, he is only a cat. A small funeral which I had an obligation to attend, and to the Underworld he went, and rest of the family about their business. Only I remained by the grave, not out of guilt or sadness or anything deemed plausible come from the mouth of Romeo. To throw the knife I twisted in its gut to the victim’s body. In older times, soldiers throw their swords down to be buried with the king they served. Loyalty dies with the leader. And then they would forge a new sword, and swear their loyalty to the new king with the sword upright against their chest. Likewise, I can always afford another knife, one untarnished with cat blood. 

The blade sunk through the flesh, turning into butter under my hands. A biologist’s eye saw a glimpse of internal organs, curled up behind the ribcage, the tail of the intestine, before blood ruined the perfect diagram of a cat. My mother wants me to major in biology, because a medical degree held more career options, disregarding the work ethic pre-med schools demand. She had seen my dissections of fish and toads back in elementary school, and complimented without batting an eye. A curious pastime I had since childhood. A family friend with a weaker heart had swooned to the floor when I proudly showed her the toad splayed on the table, pinned like a butterfly on the wall. Blood clumped in globular masses around the wound in the stomach, beads of darker purple forming along the surface of the cut. We washed our hands in rose-scented water, the frog burnt over a candle flame. We thanked the life we took and blessed the frogs to frog heaven, for I did not want to have to hear their infernal croaking in heaven, and tossed their bodies into the garden. Fresh decomposition material for the flowers. Mine was charred on one side of the face, eyes removed and preserved in a small tube. I should have kept them with me. I can recall them, amber spheres with a dash of black. When suspended in preservation liquids, even a human eye would look beautiful. Frog’s eyes were smaller but made jewelry when decorated appropriately. Unfortunately, my mother recycled the jars a few days later, the eyes I prized flushed down the drain of the washbasin. 

I heard they dig out human eyes in _Attack of the Titans_ : I cannot say for certain because I have not seen the movie before, or the animation, whatever. Another friend disagreed and said it was unintentional damage when the giant decapitated the woman.  He showed me the famous scene in the first episode: the main character watching his mother devoured by a naked humanoid easily twenty times larger than her. “There should be this much blood,” he held his arms as wide as they could stretch. “He was at least two hundred meters away from her, and there’s no way the blood could have reached him.” I shrugged. “Animate logic.” The excuse for scientific inaccuracy.

Alvin knows nothing about _Shigeki no Kyojin_. “Yeah, but it wasn’t as good as you said,” he admitted, crossing his legs on the carpeted ground. She sat down beside him. 

She made an insulted sound. “Did you see the fight? It was awesome. The animations, and the main character almost got killed.” People say she reminds them of a psychopath. Like Jack the Ripper. I guess all fangirls have a psychopath hidden in them, breaking through the cocoon of sanity when triggered by the mention of the fandoms they worship. Apparently, one can belong to multiple fandoms, much like how one can identify with multiple countries. The equivalent of a passport, in fandom terms, is something called a ‘pairing’ that I didn’t bother to look further into. Alvin clearly hadn’t known what he was dragging himself into when he relented under her pressuring to watch the bloodbath of an _anime_. 

If circumstances had been different, I would have felt bad for him. He shot her a sheepish look, and after an apology, admitted he skipped over the fight scene because he got bored by the bloodbath. At this, she leapt to her feet and began to lecture him on the importance of every scene in a story, even the parts when the servants are talking. 

“That’s boring, who would watch that?” Now he looks pitiful. I was almost fooled into sympathy.

“People who don’t skip over the servants’ parts in _Downtown Abbey_ because these parts are actually what makes it – “

“I skip over the servants’ parts in _Downtown Abbey_ ,” I interjected. I don’t, but this conversation was beginning to bore and when I was bored, I tend to withdraw to the childish parts of my brain. “Those scenes were completely meaningless. I mean, who would want to watch Maria and Theresa talk about who is going to take out the trash or clean up the lawn? A good director would cut these scenes out because it’s just a waste of time and people get bored but not _him_ because that’s what he does. Listen, he’s going to ruin Doctor Who next.” Covering my face with my hands, I let out a sigh I reserved for when Romeo was going to die in the performance assessment last year. “He’s going to ruin it,” I repeated. 

She whipped around to face Alvin, hair flying. “Lords, he’s is the best director there can ever be. Have you seen _Broadchurch_? Freaking amazing, it was. And – “

I coughed and she turned from terrorizing Alvin cowering in front of her to glance at me. Not that he was cowering, but I like to think he is instead of playing minesweeper with an idle air about him. “Hi.” I waved at her. “I think you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m the one that said he was trash.”

She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. We weren’t close enough for her to argue and trade insults. Alvin looked up and said, “Hey” before I could spit out the curse on the tip of my tongue. Swallowing it back, I smiled and greeted him with an equally curt, “Hey”. To the back of his head, for his attention was back on his phone, typing out a message. A moment later Selene’s phone pinged and she took out her phone as well. 

I slumped back to the side of the piano, my head resting against its leg, watching them fiddle with their phones.

She giggled and showed him something. A meme, I suppose. Selene has a special liking for historical memes. Before, I to send them memes, historical or not, even when they stopped replying back. I guess it had something to with polluting their notifications with memes. Or, they might have grown out of it. Alvin didn’t like historical memes as much when he wasn’t with Selene. 

I did not feel ignored at all. The peace was enjoyable. Selene’s giggles and Alvin’s dry replies gives my words an edge that are completely unintentional. I don’t think I want to know why, either. There are lots of things I don’t know the reason to and don’t want to know. 

For example, why didn’t the main character drive the sword through the giant’s skull when he had the chance, and allowed the giant to pin him to the ground? Sure, he had an arm injury, but it was not his fighting hand. And how does one win minesweeper? I’ve tried at the game several times, asking for tutorials from Alvin, but he would shrug after ten minutes with the advice that I’m improving, I just need more individual practice. He began teaching Selene minesweeper around the same time I asked, and now she challenges him to beat her records. Most of the time he will beat her, but sometimes, he would lose by a minute or more, which shouldn’t be possible for someone of his skill. Even now I don’t understand what is the point of enabling the “shortcuts” that she had discovered a week ago. Alvin seemed happy about it, for some reason also I don’t understand. 

There is too much I do not understand. 

How does she play the piano so well? How does he sight-read a new piece so fast? What is with her obsession over _anime_ , which, in my opinion, is a waste of her talent and her time? Why would he go over to her house for a discussion over college majors, when she was merely a sophomore? Why should he know about her future career options? 

There are questions that I want to ask, and they ring in my ears, now, as I watch them interacting silently in a language I will never understand, speaking words only they will know the meaning to. 

Taking out my own phone, I searched out another historical meme and forwarded it to them. Their phones did not ping in the way _Messenger_ does when a new message is received. They continued typing and I sent them more and more historical memes until Google Chrome crashed. A few seconds later, my phone surrendered to my aggressive usage.  “Do you guys have a charger?” I asked. Selene pointed to her bag, not looking up from showing him a video of a pianist accomplishing an impossible feat. I was too far to hear the piece. Taking her gesture as her permission, I took out the charger from her bag and went to the socket closest to them, crawling behind their hunched backs. 

Alvin leaned back, supporting his body his arms behind him. “Horowitz is too good for us.”

“Come on, you’re not going to compare yourself to him, are you?” She laughed and punched him in the arm. 

Three seconds later the pain registered in his head and he clutched his arm in mock affront. “What was that for?”

Taking advantage of his distraction, she swiped his phone and unlocked it with ease. I managed to fit the plug into the outlet, the thick cord twisted in an impossible knot. “Stop staring at the ceiling and look at people when they are talking to you.”

I heard a soft “Sorry” as the startup sound of my phone blared through the empty room. They didn’t seem to mind, caught up in their own conversation, flipping a ‘bugger off’ to the world around them. Feet scraping on the floor didn’t catch their attention. She was typing on Alvin’s phone while he looked over her shoulder, his chin brushing the black cardigan Selene wore. 

Closer, and closer, until she needed only to tilt her head for their lips to meet. 

Had I some talent in photography, I would have captured this moment and hang it in a bronze frame across my room. Every morning, I would wake to the image of their intimacy. I would burn it to the back of my eyes, engrave it on my retinas with a razor, the ghost of their kiss be lingering on mine when I lick my lips. Had I Alvin’s talent in composing I would have composed a haunting nocturne in their honor, a whispering serenade, a gavotte that leaped and crashed into the final bar. A mockery of a sonnet was the fusion of my poetical skills, because anyone can write poems and I wrote one for poor Romeo, three years ago when I did not know what love is, mocked those who traded their hearts for their first kisses. Now, the full force of the mockery from my past words hammers a wedge into the heart, over the hole shaped in the figure of Selene. Tension stiffened my throat.

A new message from my mother, demanding me to return home. I replied I am busy socializing with friends. Alvin was playing the piano, Selene sitting on a stool beside him. She turned the page when he nodded, her hand barely missing his cheek. 

I didn’t recognize the song, but it was too Romantic for my taste. But if Romance is what Selene prefers, then Alvin will play it for her. 

“What’s the name of that piece?” I ask when he’s finished. She answered for him, “Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, second movement. It’s a nice piece.”

Alvin nodded in agreement. “Do you want me to play it again?” The question was directed at me but his eyes were fixed on Selene. 

I shook my head. “I don’t like the piece. Too much emotions and sadness.”

“It’s supposed to be emotional.” He readied his fingers on the keys. “Or else it would just be hitting out the notes, one by one, which is how you play the piano.”

The piano didn’t cover her exclamation over the insult, but I didn’t mind. This is what Alvin is like to most people. He speaks to Selene in softer tones, but she was not most people and is his special someone in the definition of the word that is often misunderstood which I think I am starting to understand. Usually, it is a stinging remark that leaves a bad first impression, but that is how he speaks, whether he meant it or not. Only to those he holds no regard for does he speak respectfully to. Being with kindness meant pity from Alvin. Indifference indicates dislike, but insults meant casual friends.

“I play the piano as well as you do,” I protested, knowing it wasn’t true. Selene covered her mouth with one hand to unsuccessfully hide her snicker, typing on her phone with the other. If she sent a message, I didn’t hear, because the piano was loud, despite the piece being a quiet lull between the thunderous first movement and the frantic, agitated third.

“Sure,” Alvin said, managing the transition of chords with ease. 

“Are you sight-reading?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t be letting you to think you might play as well as I can if I’m not sight reading. This is pretty bad.”

“Just give up,” she suggested when I opened my mouth to retaliate with the venom of Alvin’s words. “I’ve given up on him already.”

He shoots her a glance. “You’re not allowed to give up on me.” The phrase repeated, louder than the first, but never breaking the calm. 

Back to the first theme, a reference to the minor key of the piece. “I’m not going to let you give up on me.” It was barely audible over the rumblings of the lower notes. “You’re not allowed to give up on me.”

He finished, his hands dropping to his lap. The frown in her brows untangled by the end of the piece. He stopped her taking the sheet music from the piano with a hand to her shoulder, placing black folder to the side.

Looked at each other. The world collapsed until it was only them, Alvin and Selene, by the piano, and all they knew was this moment and the love in their eyes that ran deeper than the shallow puddle of emotions shriveled in me. Like Romeo when he caressed Juliet’s body in the bier. Juliet, too, when she took the poison from Romeo’s lips, and then her life with his dagger, ensuring their love would outlive death, transcending to time infinite. 

I tore out of the room, back to the mindless laughter of the larger world outside. I would have traded anything to remain ignorant. Pressing my eyes against the wet, a path of splinters before me as I walked away from a world I now know exists. 


End file.
